Friday, August 29, 2008

oooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooo....

I am making some mittens. For a long time now, I have been admiring stranded mittens of various styles... traditional Norwegian, Latvian, what have you. So finally, I went ahead and decided to make the Rosebord mittens; I got the pattern and the yarn from Nordic Fiber Arts. As an aside, Nordic Fiber Arts has excellent customer service... they had a question about my order, contacted me about it by telephone, and the package was waiting for me at my home less than 24 hours later! It does help that they are within a couple of hours' driving distance, I suppose... they do not have a physical store, much to the benefit of my credit card balance, I'm sure!

Anyway, back to the mittens. It took me maybe halfway through the mitten to kind of get my groove with the two color knitting; I was carrying the inactive yarns sort of tightly behind the knitted fabric. I carry both colors in my right hand... one on my index finger, and one on my middle finger. It works pretty well for me. I'd take a picture if I had three hands, but I do not, so I will not.

Here is the back of the hand... I just LOVE these flowers! I really do. I find them to be a bit more round and soft than some of the patterns that I've seen, maybe even a little art deco-ish?

Here is the palm - I love that the pattern on the palm is different, and even the pattern on the thumb is different!

Here are a couple of flower close-ups:

I will definitely not be losing steam on this project... I'm considering whether or not I'll line them, either with some sort of fabric, or with a second knitted layer... perhaps cashmere? Yummmm.